


Bleeding Through

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Captain America, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Cold, Communism, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Alternating, Psychological, Russia, abuse of parentheses, assassinations, hit-man, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 10:41:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Some mornings he wakes up</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>(they wake him)</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>and he feels a clawing in his head, like there’s someone else in there battering their way out. There’s no greater discomfort he feels than that, and he knows discomfort. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleeding Through

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (belated) Birthday, Sarah! 
> 
> (please don't cry)

Some mornings he wakes up

(they wake him)

and he feels a clawing in his head, like there’s someone else in there battering their way out. There’s no greater discomfort he feels than that, and he knows discomfort. They test him out for discomfort every time he wakes up, electrodes to his feet, to the palms of his hands, pain so divine it twists the doubt away from him.

****** 

He dreams.

Oh, he dreams.

He dreams of sunny sweaty days. The kind of days he almost never sees, the slate of Moscow or St. Petersburg or Warsaw heavy and hazy. He never wakes up on sunny days, he thinks, he doesn’t know where this memory is dredged up from, buried deep inside of him. A dream of a sky that’s so blue it hurts to look at, maddening blue, slivers of it caught between buildings and pinned by skyscrapers in the distance.

He dreams of someone screaming but it’s all in good fun, the whooshing sound of a roller coaster 

(the Cyclone, ride the Cyclone, come on, Steve)

the sticky smell of cotton candy and hot dogs, pilfered from the stands but he can’t know, he’ll be disappointed. 

(Who?)

His eyes are the same color as the sky when he smiles, that same intoxicating blue, but smiles are only for the dreamer, and he’s not the dreamer, not anymore. He wishes he was, but wishes are for fools. One must ration wishes like one rations sugar. Or coffee.

******

The gun is comfortable in his hands. He knows guns, he’s familiar, they’re familiar to him. He’s a genius, they say. He’s the best. He can take the ancient guns they give him and calculate the angles and the wind in his head, he can make shots no one else can. It should be a point of pride but he doesn’t care. They wake him up and tell him who to kill, and he does.

It doesn’t feel bad, it shouldn’t feel bad. The fact is that it’s what he was made to do. He comes back to the Red Room and does as he’s told until the other in his head tries to fight his way out. The other in his head is stronger than they think. Sometimes he can talk to him, Russian and English, but he understands every word.

_Why are you here who are you?_

**Comrade, you have to go back to sleep**.

_I don’t like this dream, Steve, Steve, where are you, why haven’t you found me yet?_

The Red Room doesn’t believe in rehabilitation or in therapy, though. They believe in results and he produces results so they don’t kill him. They just put him back to sleep until the next time they need him.

*****

Sometimes they wake him up for other reasons.

He hates it when they do that. When he wakes up and they tell him he has a pretty mouth, like it’s some kind of skill he worked at

(you _mouth_ , Bucky, god, your lips are a cardinal sin)

like he wasn’t just born with them, or made with them, he doesn’t know how he got here. Logically, of course, he knows, but he’s not sure where that logic came from. Who is his mother? Who is his father? He doesn’t remember either of them. He didn’t spring from air, born suddenly with a sniper rifle in his hand. His mouth is their legacy.

He wonders if they would be sick at this, at how he’s passed around when they’re bored or horny or tired. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. He swallows and wipes his mouth and he looks away and lets them get off at the idea of having an assassin of his caliber between their legs. It is the most stupid thing they could do. He could kill them and not even break a sweat.

He thinks about it. Break that one’s neck, turn, shove that one’s nose into his brain, choke the last one. It wouldn’t even be hard. But then what?

Nothing could make the clawing at his head stop, then. No ice to keep the other voice in his head quiet, placated, silent. Nothing could make the pain of having someone else fighting him every step of the way. The weapons the other employs are skillful, thought out, patient. They’re weapons the Red Room doesn’t even know is there.

*****

You dream of Brooklyn, and you know it’s it Brooklyn. You know because he’s asleep, iced, and you’re awake suddenly. It’s hard to stay awake these days, it takes more and more to dream, you’ve never been very good at _patience_.  
Steve, you miss Steve. You think of his eyes and his hair and his hands, always too big for his body until he was suddenly bigger than you.

Then he wakes up and tries to invade the dream. He dreams of the sky over Brooklyn, pinned in place by skyscrapers. He dreams of Coney Island 

(he doesn’t know that’s what it’s called, _Coney Island_ , the name is forbidden and welcoming all at once)

and of hot dogs and cotton candy, stuck to the inside of his mouth, sticky and sweet and glued to the back of his teeth, a sensation he doesn’t actually know or understand. He dreams of a boy with skinny wrists and hands too big for his body and eyes that reflect the sky but not the sea, the sea is gray like your eyes in a mirror.

His eyes are gray like the belly of an errant cloud, ruining a perfectly good day.

*****

He doesn’t like the feeling of soft things beneath his fingers, the tactile sensation of gloves. He needs them, because it’s negative 20 degrees without the wind chill, and the mark doesn’t want to get out of his house. This is stupid. The man is never going to leave his house, and his arm is going to go stiff and unresponsive, and this man will live to see another day.

He doesn’t like the cold much, even though the Red Room is convinced he doesn’t feel it. He does. It settles in his bones and sits there, bitter and pooling, gripping him tight. He doesn’t know anything else. He was born in cold, he sleeps in cold, he kills in cold. 

Winter Soldier, it’s a name for a reason.

The man comes out and he takes a moment, a breath, glancing through his scope. He feels like he’s done this before

(of course he’s done this before, he does this, this is all he does)

but instead of seeing a blonde man in a thick coat, he sees a blonde man in blue and white and a helmet and

(breathe)

the bullet flies

(breathe)

and he misses.

He stares at his gun for a long time, almost so long that he misses the man’s movement. He never misses. He never misses because he’s the best and because a miss is a way to give away his position, and he’s a genius with the rifle. It’s what he does.

He scrabbles off the roof of the building, packing the rifle away fast, skimming down the side of an alley, blessing the utilitarian Communist design for a moment. The man is fleeing. He knows what’s coming, but no one will stop it. 

He’s so blonde. The images are relentless, then, chasing another blonde down a war-torn factory, running to keep up, except that the blonde in his vision is too fast and this one is caught, begging in Russian, Polish, German.

It’s messy. He hates blood on his metal fingers. It freezes almost right away.

*****

He breathes out and it’s cold, icy air, frozen in his lungs, shards of ice slicing the inside of his throat and his mouth.

*****

_Why haven’t you saved me yet?_

_I always saved you._

_I was always there._

_Where are you?_

******

The only memory you’re willing to agree on with him is the one you’re trying not to share. _He dropped you, comrade_ he says, brusquely, matter of factly. 

No, you think, you remember his face, his face said it all. That blue was already the color of loss.

 _He didn’t try to find you_ he points out.

You don’t believe that. If you believe that, you’ll crack, fall apart in your prison. He loved you, you know he did, he loved you enough to kiss you on the mouth even though you both knew it was something that would end up with both of you arrested if anyone knew. _Forget him, think of someone else_.

There is no one else.

If you believe that, you’ll stop, you’ll never be real again. You won’t bleed through in the way he cleans his gun, meticulous like you. You won’t bleed through in the care he takes, in the breaths between the scope and the trigger. You won’t bleed through when he wants to aim the rifle to the left during a wind that will take the bullet straight center. You won’t bleed through when the memory of slingshots against windowpanes tells you everything you need to know about a shot. Everyone thinks the brilliance is him, he’s the one, but no, it’s you, it’s you looking through the scope, taking aim, pulling the trigger. It’s you and it’s the war and it’s Brooklyn gunning through the scope, the sum of everything you are.

There are shots not even the Winter Soldier could make, but Bucky Barnes can.

******

He sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps, forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed, any mistakes or typos are purely my own.


End file.
